Tag: Atomic

The corporate owner of Salomon and Atomic may be sold to Chinese investors. Finnish Amer Sports has revealed last week that it had received what they termed as "indication of interest" from a consortium of Chinese sportswear company Anta and FountainVest Partners, a Hong Kong private equity group. It must be quite a serious "indication of interest" since, unusually, the offer size was revealed: the Chinese are ready to purchase the whole Amer Sports for a rather princely €4.6 billion in all-cash buyout. Or over 25% more than the market value of the company was before the announcement ( Amer Sports is a publicly traded company) Anta is big in team sports in China and is starting to make inroads into pro-basketball in the US: they just unveiled signature Klay Thompson shoes…

Today Fischer has proudly announced that it has officially won the battle to become a sponsor to Ingvild Flugstad Østberg. The switch is rather comprehensive: the double Olympic champion “...will place her trust in skis, bindings and boots from Fischer from now on...” Thus ends the “ski drama of the summer of 2018”, rather extensively covered in Norwegian media . The word "drama"" is applicable since it involved two teammates & friends, Østberg and the current World Cup holder Heidi Weng, who long were postergirls for Madshus but felt they underachieved at the Olympics in Korea. At the end Heidi chose to stay with her current skis/boots sponsor, Madshus - while Ingvild went to the “Fischer stable” - where, presumably, she will take the place of retired Marit Bjørgen in…

A million dollar question from our very own version of Trivial Pursuit: name one brand of cross country skis that are produced in Great Britain Scratching your head? So do we Yet it is Britain that tops the official Eurostat data as the EU top xc ski exporter. No kidding. The United Kingdom had somehow managed to export a whopping 941.476 pairs of narrows skis in 2016. Austria, the country of Fischer and Atomic, had only sent some 300.000 pairs France, a birthplace of Salomon and Rossignol brands, is a distant third with 56.000 followed by Finland ( Karhu, Yoki, Peltonen) with 45.000 Italy ( SkiTrab) exported less than 5000. Even Portugal managed to export 25 pairs, while Croatia did 4 ( four) pairs Britain's phenomenal exporting prowess could only…

Amer Sports , the owner of Salomon and Atomic, have released its Q1 2017 financial report. The Winter Sports Equipment department, as Amer Sports calls its ski/poles/boots producing brands, has reported a massive year-on-year growth – the sales went up stunning 18 percent to €52.1 million – even if other company departments' sales were flat or depressed. Says Heikki Takala, president and CEO, Amer Sports "...We made strong progress in Winter Sports Equipment, and started to rebound in Fitness...” The Finnish sports equipment and apparel maker stresses that the growth to “was aided by good snow conditions in many key markets” Sure, the last winter in Europe was much snowier than the previous ones, but making good skis – and having elite racers win on them - couldn't possibly hurt…